Another day, another blog about Dead Space. Why you so obsessed with Dead Space? You might ask, and for good reason. Why indeed? What is it about this now mass-produced horror gaming behemoth, a title frequently accused, and for good reason, of moving away from it's survival horror, eeeeew what's that I'm stomping on roots in order to add in more action and appeal to a wider audience? The answer is not one that can be arrived at easily. Well, it can. Actually.

This morning (or last night if you're an american reader - hello!) Visceral released the launch trailer for Dead Space 3 - featuring some snippets of gameplay and a cool live action sequence starring none other than Gunner Wright, the actor who provides the voice and mo-cap for the badass space engineer that is Isaac Clarke.

Gunner fucking Wright.

After seeing this trailer I was immediately super-hyped for Dead Space 3. Not because of the strange song choice (I can feel it coming in the air tonight - oo-ohoh!) or my squeals of fangirlesque delight at seeing the aforementioned Mr. Wright donning an arctic survival suit and looking for all intents and purposes like he is about to fuck shit up. Not because of the random clips of Johnny Necromorph jumping out of things and going boo, nor the clips of Isaac and slightly-less-badass Carver shooting stuff. The reason I was so excited after seeing the trailer was down purely to the fact that this game has a story. A proper one. I know, right?

Let's go through some plots. Dead Space 1: A (kind of) faceless and voiceless Isaac Clarke is sent with a cast of stereotypical characters to a ship. He then spends the next however many hours getting off the ship. Story finished.

Dead Space 2: Isaac wakes up on another ship or station or whatever and proceeds to get attacked by necromorphs. Some characters appear (like Ellie - more on her later), but still it's pretty much him trying to escape, which he does.

It's important that this is just the premise I'm talking about. Both of the originals have great stories which explore Isaac as a character, his motives, and the things that drive him. Problem is these games have basically the same premise. From a gameplay standpoint Dead Space 2 is just Dead Space 1 with a bigger ship, which is fine, as an expansion of the core game is a great idea when making a sequel. With Dead Space 3, Isaac is the one in control. He's the one who's gone to this ice planet, he's the one who's going after the Necromorphs and he's the one looking for answers. It's a new premise, which means new opportunities for both gameplay and story.

A couple of scenes in the trailer stuck with me after I watched it. Excluding Gunner Wright (I had to watch the trailer a few times to see anything other than him) the scenes showing Isaac with/looking at pictures of him with Ellie, a character first introduced in Dead Space 2 as a Ripley-esque heroin capable of casually getting her eye gouged out and still killing shit, seemed particularly interesting. One of the big things with Dead Space 1 and 2 was Isaac's girlfriend Nicole. You find out she's dead (like, totally dead), but thanks to a unique form of dementia he keeps seeing her as an apparition of the marker throughout the first two Dead Space games, eventually defeating her (and in the process his inner demons) during a climactic scene at the end of Dead Space 2. Isaac escapes from Dead Space 2 with Ellie, who is thankfully not an apparition and she presumably becomes his love interest in Dead Space 3, which should add a good dynamic to the story and a driving force for Isaac.

If those're two different pictures stuck together that's really creepy.

Basically, Dead Space 3 is a change from the norm. The plot is different, a host of characters we'll hopefully care for are being added and Isaac is more real and sympathetic than ever. Roll on February 8th.